


Recognition

by soroga



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Anti-Android Sentiments, M/M, Triple Drabble, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22689829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soroga/pseuds/soroga
Summary: Chris sees him a different way every time.
Relationships: Data/Christopher Hobson
Comments: 10
Kudos: 9
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Recognition

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flowerdeluce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowerdeluce/gifts).



Someone worked hard to make the android walk like a man, but there’s still something off about the way it moves, like a wind-up toy on the last turn of its key. Its voice is soothingly low, a wasted effort when the sickly gray of its bioplast gives anyone with real skin goosebumps. Its eyes are all wrong.

Chris has never wasted his energy getting mad at machines. He’s never been the guy to hit the console when something doesn’t work. But the android says, “request denied,” and Chris hates it with a fervor he’d previously reserved for actual people.

-

Before, he’d thought the only way to get under an android’s skin was with a laser scalpel. But while the threat to relieve him of duty was necessary, a simple calculation in the android’s eyes, the anger in his voice was something else.

The anger could have been a calculation too. Maybe Chris is fooling himself. But Chris keeps remembering the flash of his eerie eyes and the conviction in his perfectly modulated voice at the strangest of times. 

When Chris makes his report about the encounter with the Romulans, the only thing he calls the android is “Captain Data.” 

-

The next time they meet, Chris is bleeding from a phaser wound. 

“Captain,” Chris slurs before he even sees the captain’s stripes on Data’s sleeves. 

“Commander,” Data responds before picking him up one-handed.

Someone worked hard to make him warm as any other man, though the casual way he carries Chris while laying down cover fire makes it obvious something’s different.

Chris blacks out. When he wakes up, it’s silent, and Data’s gentle hands are smoothing a silicon sheet over his wound. “Commander,” Captain Data says again in that soothing voice, and Chris knows he wasn’t fooling himself at all.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Podfic: 'Recognition' by soroga](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24129724) by [peasina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peasina/pseuds/peasina)




End file.
